Sable Wren had one plan left: reach the smuggler's boat at the docks before the regime turned her face into a flag. So she left her home before dawn. Her home was a shipping container someone had cut windows into and bolted shut against the wind. She pulled the door tight and stepped into the cold. She hated her own face. Not the bones of it, but what people did with it. For weeks now, strangers had sprayed her likeness on walls across Atlantica. Her shaved head. Her cracked lips. Her orange dock vest, bright as a warning light. They painted her as a symbol of the people against the regime. She had never agreed to any of it. Now the enforcers wanted the symbol, and the symbol was her. She rounded the last corner before the water and stopped cold. A fresh mural covered the wall ahead. Her face, three times life-size, paint still wet and dripping. Two enforcers stood beneath it. A third walked the boat line, checking hoods, checking hands. They were guarding the exact stretch she needed to cross. Sable pressed into a doorway. Her boat waited past the enforcers. She had paid for that seat with two years of saved wages. If she turned back now, the boat left without her. She reached into her coat. She carried two things for this. A draped ash-gray cloak, weathered and plain, the kind every ration worker wore. And a slim can of wash-out hair dye, bought off a market cart. She had planned for a crowd to hide in. Instead she had a wall of her own face and three men reading it. She pulled the cloak over the orange vest until no color showed. Then she shook the can and sprayed her scalp fast. Dark dye ran down her neck. She smeared it into her skin, dulling the pale shine that matched the mural. Her hands shook. She kept spraying until the can hissed empty. A cart rolled toward the docks, stacked with crates. Behind it walked a knot of ration workers, all in gray cloaks, heads down. Sable stepped out and fell in among them. She matched their slow pace. She kept her painted eyes on the ground. An enforcer's arm shot out and gripped her shoulder. "You. Look up." Sable looked up. Dark hair. Dye-streaked skin. A tired gray face like a dozen others. His eyes moved from her to the mural above and back. The painted woman had a pale shaved head. Sable did not. "Move," he said, and shoved her forward. She reached the boat line and climbed down toward the water. But the enforcer's stare stayed on her back. He had touched her shoulder. He had felt the vest under the cloak. Halfway to the boat, she heard him call to the others. Behind her, boots began to run.

Sable did not climb into the boat. The man at the tiller waved her off with both hands. "Not here," he hissed. "Not with them running." She scrambled back up the boat line as the enforcers reached the water. The smuggler shoved off without her. Her seat, her two years of wages, drifted out with the tide. But before he vanished into the dark, he pointed inland and mouthed one word. Chapel. She ran. The enforcers lost her among the crates and the fog. She walked until the docks fell behind, until she found the old chapel with the broken tower. Salt had eaten the stone. Timbers sagged over cracked windows of colored glass. She slipped through the gap in the boarded door and waited in the dark. This was where she would learn if she had any way out at all. Boots crunched outside near dawn. A broad man ducked through the door. His coat was stitched from rubber scraps and loops of chain. She knew him. Dex Waller, the scavenger who lived two containers down from hers, the one who traded salvage for food and never touched anything with a government stamp. "You," he said. He looked at her dyed scalp, her streaked skin. "The one on every wall. I thought so." He did not sound afraid. He sounded tired. "You're the smuggler," Sable said. "I move things the regime wants kept still. Tonight that was supposed to be crates." He crossed his arms. "Not a face they've printed a bounty on. You cost me the whole run." "I paid for that seat." "You paid for a quiet passenger. You're the loudest thing in Atlantica." He turned toward the door. "Enforcers are checking every hull now. I take you, they take my boat and my neck." He was leaving. She had nothing left to bargain with but the truth of what she carried. Sable pulled the bag from inside her coat and dropped it on the cracked floor. It split open. Dark angular ration chips spilled across the stone, dozens of them, the kind traded under the table. Dex stopped. He crouched and turned one chip in his fingers. No stamp. Clean market goods. "There's more where I hid the rest," she said. "Yours. All of it. Just get me out." He weighed the chip a long moment. Food was food, and he traded for nothing else. "One boat left that they haven't searched," he said at last. "Mine's burned now. This other man owes me. He runs tomorrow night, from the north rocks." He stood. "I'll take you to him. After that you're his problem." Sable let out a breath. "Thank you." "Don't thank me." He scooped the chips back into the bag and pocketed it. "He's meaner than me, and he charges double for the marked ones. Whatever you gave me, he'll want more." He pushed open the door. "Come on. We move before light."

They never left the chapel. Dawn came gray through the cracked colored glass, and Dex crouched at the door with one eye on the street. He swore under his breath and pulled back. "Enforcers," he said. "A whole line of them. Going door to door." Sable pressed against the cold stone and listened. Boots. Shouted orders. They were sweeping the district for her, and this ruin was one more door to open. "They'll come inside by midday," Dex said. He looked at her dyed scalp, then at the bright orange vest under her coat. "That thing will get us both hung. Take it off." "I've tried. It doesn't come off." She showed him the seam sewn shut, no clasp, no zipper. Dex grunted and drew a short blade from his patchwork coat. He sawed at the fabric until the vest split. It fell away. For the first time in weeks Sable stood without it, thin and shivering in the dark. A voice called from behind the altar. "You can't burn it here. The smoke will bring them." A young man stepped from the shadows where the timbers sagged. Dark beard, dark hoodie, hands buried in his pockets. Sable had not known anyone else was hiding in the chapel. He nodded at the ruined vest on the floor. "I've watched you two argue for an hour. You want out of this district, you don't fight the sweep. You join it." "Who are you?" Sable said. "Someone who queues at the ration hall every morning," the man said. "Ethan. They're funneling the whole district there for the count. Enforcers wave the crowd through. Nobody looks at a face in a line that long." He tossed her a gray cloak, weathered and draped, the kind the ration lines all wore. "Put that over the bald head. Walk in the middle. Walk slow." Dex studied him hard. "And you help her why?" "Because a girl in a vest brought enforcers to my street," Ethan said flatly. "I want her gone as much as you do." There was no better plan and no time. Sable pulled the cloak over her shoulders and drew the hood low. Dex kicked the split vest under a broken pew. They slipped out into the flow of frightened people the enforcers were herding along. Sable kept her head down and her steps even. The crowd pressed toward the tall doors of the distribution hall. An enforcer stood at the entrance, waving them through by the dozen. His eyes slid over her hood and moved on. She passed under the sign and into the wide, orderly hall. The sweep had swallowed her whole and let her through. Inside, Ethan caught her sleeve. "They log every ration card at the count," he whispered. "You don't have one. When you reach the front, they'll know." The line inched forward. Sable was safe from the street and trapped in the hall.